Liverpool Football Club made a loss of almost £50m in the year to 31 July 2011, according to the club's managing director, Ian Ayre. Talking about the accounts before they became publicly available at Companies House, Ayre said the club's commercial income had increased, but did not say what it or Liverpool's total income for the year amounted to.

Ayre said that much of the loss of £49.4m was accounted for by writing off £35m incurred by the previous American owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, in plans for a redesigned new stadium on neighbouring Stanley Park. Ayre said that plan had now been scrapped and the club is still investigating redeveloping Anfield itself, which previous regimes found was practically impossible because of planning issues. Ayre said if the club is to conclude it will, after all, build a new stadium, it will revert to an original design, which was drawn up before 2004, when it was first submitted for planning permission. Ayre did not specify how the £35m figure was constituted.

Talking to the Liverpool Echo, Ayre said the new American owners, John Henry's Fenway Sports Group, who bought Liverpool in November 2010, had incurred costs of £8.4m in sacking the manager they inherited, Roy Hodgson, and other staff. Hodgson's coaching team were also fired during the torrid period at Anfield for Hodgson, who is now the England manager, and FSG also paid off the managing director, Christian Purslow, who departed when they took over.

The period of the accounts covers the latter months of ownership by Hicks and Gillett, and eight months under FSG. The accounts were due to be filed at Companies House on 30 April and were late; they are now expected to be published at midnight on Thursday.

Ayre confirmed that the new owners had paid off the £200m debt which Hicks' and Gillett's 2007 purchase had loaded on to the club. FSG had "pumped in £200m", he said, although that was the price charged to FSG for buying the club, as made clear in the bitterly contested negotiations over the takeover at the time. Paying off that "acquisition debt" had reduced the interest payments incurred by Liverpool from £18m to £3m, he said. Ayre did not say whether the new owners have invested any more of their own money than that initial £200m purchase price into the club. That should become clear when the full accounts are published.

The period covers the year in which Liverpool received £50m from Chelsea for selling Fernando Torres and spent £131m on players including Andy Carroll, for £35m, and Luis Suárez, for £22m. Ayre did not say what Liverpool's wage bill was as a result of the change in players, nor the balance on its transfers. Overall, he said, Liverpool would have "been looking at breaking even" had they not written off the £35m stadium costs, the £8.4m in employee termination payments and around £18m in unspecified further costs which he said amounted to £59m in "exceptional items."

Ayre argued Liverpool's was a good financial performance given that they did not have the "significant revenue uplift" from playing Champions League football in 2010-11, as they have not this season and will not have next season. "I don't think there would have been many clubs that could not be playing Champions League football but still maintaining a break-even position," he said.

Liverpool's commercial income has increased due to the sponsorship deal with Standard Chartered, secured under the Hicks and Gillett ownership, Ayre said. Of Liverpool's commercial performance compared with Manchester United, Arsenal and other top clubs, he said: "I've always said we were a long, long way behind. And I still feel like we're playing a bit of catch up."